What do you think is the minimum appropriate age to enter EMS?

What is the minimum appropriate age for entry into EMS?

  • Total voters
    52
CAOX3 said:
Im sure your quite able, but we dont institue rules based on the exceptions
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Point. But what happens when someone turns 21 that they're magically mature or responsible enough to handle the responsibility that they weren't capable of handling the day before, or three years before?

I wouldn't trust my brother on an ambulance. He's not responsible enough for it. And he's 27. I'd rather have my friend's 16 year old sister riding next to me, she's much more mature.

This is such a slippery slope. Someone mentioned an interview and screening process to get in to the schools. Perhaps that's what we need, and not a set-in-stone age.
 
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adamjh3 said:
Point. But what happens when someone turns 21 that they're magically mature or responsible enough to handle the responsibility that they weren't capable of handling the day before, or three years before?

I wouldn't trust my brother on an ambulance. He's not responsible enough for it. And he's 27. I'd rather have my friend's 16 year old sister riding next to me, she's much more mature.

This is such a slippery slope. Someone mentioned an interview and screening process to get in to the schools. Perhaps that's what we need, and not a set-in-stone age.
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I agree but when a case by case decision cant be made.

As far as your 16y/o friend thats fine that you believe she has reached a maturity age appropriate for EMS but the fact remains she cant make decisions per society for herself she shouldnt be making them for others whether she is able or not.

And who's responsibility is she on scene? I cant be worried if she is wandering off in traffic somewhere or cant detect a unsafe situation. In essence Im now responsible for her also because lawfully she cant be responsible for herself.

It isnt a controlled enviorment. Scenes change, rapidly at times and to expect a sixteen year old to be able to adapt to those changes could be a deadly oversight.

I as a parent and a EMS provider can assure you my child will not be stepping foot in or around any EMS, fire or police vehicle until she is of age. Not like she would want to she is going to be an orthopedic surgeon, she just doesnt know it yet she s only 1. :)
 
I became an EMT at 16 and I was mature enough at the time. I started medic school at 18 and got my medic at 19, I'm 20 now. I have the skill set and am mature enough to do my job effectively. Although, it's kinda wierd pushing all these cool drugs/narcs still and I can't buy a beer!
 
Nope still 53. Why? Because young enough to do the job. Old enough you can empathize with your patients. Old enough to understand the seriousness of the consequences of deciding to do a procedure or push a drug rather than saying hey gnarly dude I can try this or do this. Old enough to understand that death is death and that when it starts knocking not much you can do. And more important old enough to not play the stupid pranks and games that hurt any attempt we have to look like a real profession, this is not elementary school people.
 
medic417 said:
Nope still 53. Why? Because young enough to do the job. Old enough you can empathize with your patients. Old enough to understand the seriousness of the consequences of deciding to do a procedure or push a drug rather than saying hey gnarly dude I can try this or do this. Old enough to understand that death is death and that when it starts knocking not much you can do. And more important old enough to not play the stupid pranks and games that hurt any attempt we have to look like a real profession, this is not elementary school people.
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So then would being an attending physician of an ER at 26 or 27 be too young for some of you then too? I guess they wouldn't be old enough to understand the seriousness either of pushing medications or that once your dead your gone? Every medical professional should just be 53.
 
I voted for 18, but in my opinion it just really depends on the individual person's maturity.
 
EMS/LEO505 said:
I voted for 18, but in my opinion it just really depends on the individual person's maturity.
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Honestly that is the real factor. Sadly though hard to regulate a Profession based on maturity.
 
I'm voting 16, since 14 isn't an option. I think that regulating our adolescents away from the helping professions until well after the World of Warcraft addictions are established is a mistake in society.

A supervised 14 year old is perfectly capable as riding as a 3rd, assisting with tasks under the complete supervision of the AIC.

In VA, it was only in the past few years that the regs were changed to only allow people 16 and older to ride on ambulances. That killed the junior programs in our volunteer squads because the students had moved on to different interests by the time they were old enough to run.

Teach a person to be responsible, expect big things out of them, and they will perform. Then, they can go right from the high school EMT class (our HS has a votech program that's one year long: EMT in the fall and firefighter in the spring) to the community college for paramedic, and to the state university for their degree in nursing, emergency management, fire science, communication, marketing, whatever, and be an educated, relatively experienced person at 23.

I abhor our society's current tendency to disallow young people from having any responsibility and then whining about how they aren't responsible.

I understand how a patient may be less comfortable with a young EMT, but a well-educated 19 year old is worth way more to me than a lazy, cocky 27 year old any day.
 
abckidsmom said:
, but a well-educated 19 year old is worth way more to me than a lazy, cocky 27 year old any day.
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Linus isn't that old but he is lazy.:P

It is true though that kids do not have to learn responsibility at a young age. I was working almost full time hours by the time I was 10 or 11 and I had a paying job even before that. I still had to maintain high grades while working. Now days oh little Johnny can't work he needs to focus on school yet when you see the kid he is hanging out playing games or cruising the street on his parents dime. If I wanted to cruise I had to buy the gas, the tires, the car, etc.

But I have seen good kids that are expected to act responsible come through. Yes they make mistakes but so do us old people.
 
medic417 said:
Linus isn't that old but he is lazy.:P

It is true though that kids do not have to learn responsibility at a young age. I was working almost full time hours by the time I was 10 or 11 and I had a paying job even before that. I still had to maintain high grades while working. Now days oh little Johnny can't work he needs to focus on school yet when you see the kid he is hanging out playing games or cruising the street on his parents dime. If I wanted to cruise I had to buy the gas, the tires, the car, etc.

But I have seen good kids that are expected to act responsible come through. Yes they make mistakes but so do us old people.
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There are absolutely no above-the-table employment options in our small town for people under 16 years old. I have a hero of a kid who, seeing that, asked his dad to buy him a lawn mower and a weed eater and used a utility trailer to carry his stuff all around his large gated community. He had more than 25 contracts for lawn maintenance the summer he was 12. The next year, he hired a friend, had tshirts made up, and mowed 40 lawns every week, including the offices of the community and the common areas. By the time he could drive, he'd saved up enough to buy a pickup truck and trailer outright, hired 2 more guys to handle the gated community business, and branched out into the county.

In his senior year of high school, he owned 3 trucks, a fleet of mowers, and employed 10 seasonal employees, and 2 year-round, while making the honor roll at school.

He graduated this year and started a scholarship fund to be granted each year at the school for a student who shows initiative to receive $500/semester for 4 years, whether they go to college or not. He and his mom and dad pick out a kid that impresses them to receive the scholarship. The first award went to a teen dad who worked nights as a CNA, mornings in the alternative ed at the high school, and supported his child.

This is why I put my full time career on hold to raise my kids. I want to have time to follow their lead and encourage this level of initiative.

I'd rather they not have to wait till some magic number to volunteer on our rescue squad or volunteer at our nursing home, or work down at the day care learning some skills. It's completely possible to have people skills at that young age if you get out there and develop them.
 
anything younger than dead is too young.

16 years olds should be able to do ride alongs but thats it. Employment? Pay them to clean the rigs and do rig checks.
 
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firecoins said:
16 years olds should be able to do ride alongs but thats it. Employment? Pay them to clean the rigs and do rig checks.
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Isn't that what explorers do?

Ps 100th post
 
16 to complete EMT, 18 to be a solo EMT in the back with a patient, 21 to be a medic.
 
I voted 21, but I think my vote was based more on jealousy due to the fact that I waited until I was 23 to get involved with EMS :lol:. I wish I started when I was 18, but I was too busy wasting my time with other things. 18 Is definitely an appropriate age.

If we can give 18 year old soldiers a license to kill, then we should also give them a license to save lives.
 
abckidsmom said:
I'm voting 16, since 14 isn't an option. I think that regulating our adolescents away from the helping professions until well after the World of Warcraft addictions are established is a mistake in society.

A supervised 14 year old is perfectly capable as riding as a 3rd, assisting with tasks under the complete supervision of the AIC.

In VA, it was only in the past few years that the regs were changed to only allow people 16 and older to ride on ambulances. That killed the junior programs in our volunteer squads because the students had moved on to different interests by the time they were old enough to run.

Teach a person to be responsible, expect big things out of them, and they will perform. Then, they can go right from the high school EMT class (our HS has a votech program that's one year long: EMT in the fall and firefighter in the spring) to the community college for paramedic, and to the state university for their degree in nursing, emergency management, fire science, communication, marketing, whatever, and be an educated, relatively experienced person at 23.

I abhor our society's current tendency to disallow young people from having any responsibility and then whining about how they aren't responsible.

I understand how a patient may be less comfortable with a young EMT, but a well-educated 19 year old is worth way more to me than a lazy, cocky 27 year old any day.
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Well said.

The current body of literature on PFC development and decision-making in adolescents is a little suspect to me. The usual sample comprises upper/middle-class college kids, or recent graduates... not a population that's been exposed to much responsibility, on the whole. Given that environmental factors influence brain development, it doesn't seem surprising that they'd be underdeveloped until a few years after they graduate. The data is clear, but I'm not going to buy the common assertions about universal child development and causality until it's replicated among kids that have taken on adult levels of responsibility at much younger ages.
 
The most common complaint amongst Degree educators now that traditional in-service votech education of Ambulance Officers hasall but died is .... maturity issues.

Ask any Australian, Kiwi or UK ambo and they will tell you hands down that those who older and have done something else first (gotten a good dose of life experience) are better at managing people because they are more mature and make better ambos.

Brown thinks the absolute minimum age is 21; if it takes three years to go thru and do the Degree you won't get anybody out the other end before 21.

Before the Degree was introduced (when Ambulance training as vocational) and even now that we have the degree, the recruits the Ambulance Service get tend to be older people; mid 20s is probably the youngest I've encountered and if I had to venture a guess, I would put the average age at around 28 or 30.

These people have gone out and worked for several years, maybe travelled, some are ex Police or ex military, or perhaps nursing cross-overs, generally they have a spouse and children. They've been out into the real world and have some weight behind them by which I mean they can generally conduct themselves to a higher level when it comes to maturity, professionalisim, cognitive thinking and general roundedness in that they have a better conceptulisation of the "big picture" rather than lights, sirens and adrenaline.

I've dealt with the old, the sick, the "unwell", scared, suicidal, hurt, frightened, all sorts of people; ones who couldn't speak English and ones who could, people from all sorts of nations and cultures and just lots of people in between. Each has a different outlook, different needs, different problem, they may require something different than the last; not everybody needs O2 and some wheels under them, some might need me to sit there for a half hour and have a cup of tea with them and say its OK you don't need to come to the hospital.

You can't talk to a young guy who has fallen off his skateboard the same as you can a little old nana who has CHF, a house with the disugsting odour of vomited blood is different than the nice, clean private home of an asthma patient. All require that you have a different approach, or well, to contradict myself, the same approach - a calm, professional, logical manner to sort out what is going on in admist some form of chaos.

There are some people who do this very well and some who do not. Those who do not in my experience and from that I have heard from others are those with little life experience who tend to be overepresented by the very young, straight out of school kids who roll up to the Paramedic degree.

Really it doesn't matter at what age you are, you need certian traits to be an ambo, some have them and some do not; those that do not are disproportinatly represented by the young.
 
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